Senior Manager, Technical Excellence & Escalations

Tenable, Inc.•Columbia, MD

4d•$130,000 - $173,333•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Technical Excellence & Escalations leads Tenable’s global Technical Excellence team and global Escalations Engineering team within Operations & Scale. The role closes the gap between the teams’ early signals about product supportability and customer risk and the organization’s ability to act on those signals. It owns the operating model, day-to-day practice, and working-level relationships with Product and Engineering, while partnering with the Sr. Director, who sets overall strategy and carries the executive narrative. The role is focused on influence and orchestration, including enabling senior individual contributors to drive organizational change. The Senior Manager runs the Technical Excellence team’s product coverage plan and working agenda, turns Technical Lead findings into a prioritized, evidence-backed agenda, and positions Technical Leads as effective partners in Product and Engineering forums. The role also owns the global escalations practice, including its process, standards, quality of post-escalation outputs, and prevention agenda. It represents Technical Support in roadmap, release-readiness, quality, and other cross-functional forums, and builds evidence for supportability investment. The position leads and develops a senior, autonomous, globally distributed team; works as a player-coach; builds succession depth; sets goals and performance expectations; and drives AI adoption in team workflows under the Support AI governance framework. The role requires hybrid or onsite work at Tenable’s Columbia, Maryland office, availability to provide leadership coverage for critical escalations outside standard business hours as needed, collaboration across AMER, EMEA, and APJ time zones, and occasional travel.

Requirements

8+ years in Technical Support, Escalation Management, or customer-facing engineering in enterprise software, with recent focus on security or vulnerability management.
3+ years managing technical teams; experience managing senior individual contributors, technical leads, or escalation engineers is preferred.
Hands-on experience running an escalation practice or program, including process design and cross-functional coordination.
Demonstrated ability to influence Product and Engineering priorities using support and escalation data.
Experience operating within Support–Engineering agreements, including SLA adherence for defect resolution.
Comfort with support metrics and their analysis, including escalation volume, re-escalation rate, time to resolution, and ticket-volume reduction, and ability to build an evidence case for investment.
Strong understanding of Tenable’s product portfolio and security best practices, or demonstrated ability to develop that understanding quickly.
Technical foundation across networking, authentication, operating systems, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) sufficient to lead technical discussions credibly.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable with senior stakeholders and customers at any level.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
Able to work in a hybrid or onsite capacity at the Columbia, Maryland office.
Available to provide leadership coverage for critical escalations outside standard business hours as needed and to work across AMER, EMEA, and APJ time zones.
Occasional travel as required for team, customer, and cross-functional engagements.
Flexibility to perform other duties as deemed necessary by management.
Authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. without sponsorship; Tenable is unable to provide work-visa sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing remote and globally distributed teams.
Cybersecurity or adjacent enterprise security SaaS experience.
Prior experience as a Technical Lead, Principal Engineer, or Escalations Engineer.
Product Management or program management exposure.
Familiarity with AI-assisted support workflows and their governance.
Experience supporting FedRAMP or other regulated environments.

Responsibilities

Run the operating model and product coverage plan for the global Technical Excellence team, ensuring strategic products have clear lead ownership, defined authority, and coverage across theaters.
Set the Technical Excellence team’s working agenda, including the work owned by Technical Leads and the balance between reactive escalation support and proactive supportability work.
Turn Technical Lead findings, such as defect patterns, supportability gaps, documentation failures, and recurring friction, into a prioritized, evidence-backed agenda.
Equip Technical Leads to influence Product and Engineering forums as credible partners.
Contribute to the Technical Lead career path with the Education & Enablement Manager and apply progression and competencies consistently.
Own the global escalations practice day to day, including process design, entry and exit criteria, severity definitions, roles, communication standards, and adherence.
Establish and measure a single global escalations standard across theaters, allowing regional variance only where legally or operationally required.
Operate and enforce the working agreement with Product Engineering, including defect-resolution SLA adherence, prioritization criteria, update cadence, and resolution follow-through; escalate structural breakdowns to the Sr. Director.
Ensure each root cause analysis and post-incident report produces a tracked action.
Analyze root-cause patterns and drive upstream product, process, tooling, or enablement changes to reduce escalation volume and re-escalation rates.
Serve as Technical Support’s point of contact for high-severity customer situations, providing assurance and coordination without displacing the assigned Escalations Engineer.
Represent Technical Support in roadmap, release-readiness, and quality forums with Product Management and Engineering Managers, using data to make the supportability and escalation-risk case.
Run a working-level feedback loop with Product and Engineering, with defined cadence, shared prioritization, and visible tracking from support signal to shipped change.
Assemble evidence for supportability investment, including ticket volume, escalation cost, and re-escalation overhead, and partner with the Sr. Director on business cases for engineering capacity.
Partner with Engineering on release quality gates so Technical Support can provide meaningful input before general availability.
Represent both teams in cross-functional work with Customer Success, Sales Engineering, and Professional Services when escalation or account risk is in scope.
Produce regular supportability and escalation readouts for the Sr. Director, including narrative, trends, and recommendations, and present to senior leadership as requested.
Work with the Operations Manager to instrument escalation and Technical Lead activity in TSO reporting.
Lead and develop a senior, highly autonomous, globally distributed team, including the Principal Technical Lead as a technical partner and strategic extension of the function.
Operate as a player-coach by maintaining the operating cadence, coaching the team, and personally stepping into critical escalations or difficult Engineering conversations when needed.
Build succession depth in both teams and reduce single-person dependencies on strategic products and accounts.
Partner with the Education & Enablement Manager to close skill gaps and feed field learnings into broader Technical Support enablement and certification.
Set goals, performance expectations, and measurement for both teams in line with global Technical Support objectives.
Drive AI adoption within Technical Lead and Escalations workflows under the Support AI governance framework.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
Disability and life insurance.
401(k) retirement savings with company match.
Employee stock purchase plan.
Employee referral program.
Flexible spending accounts.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Education assistance.
Parental leave.
Paid time off (PTO).
Company-paid holidays.
Health and wellness events.
Community programs.
Variable compensation, including a bonus for non-sales roles, depending on company and individual performance.